Mentally ill are ill nonetheless

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fosters.com

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Posted Jan. 13, 2013 at 3:15 AM

Posted Jan. 13, 2013 at 3:15 AM

Even though their bones are not broke or kidneys failing, those suffering from mental illness are still suffering and they are still ill. For those who struggle with mental illness themselves or who help friends and relatives cope, there is no difference. Nonetheless, society as a whole has found a way to more readily treat those physical ailments rather than mental ones.

Last week, Kenneth Norton, executive director of the N.H. chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness led a news conference highlighting care problems facing the mentally ill and the dire need for change.

Among the highlights:

— A three day emergency room wait for a 20-year-old son who became unaware of his surroundings and pushed away his parents, who feared suicide.

— On one Monday morning 31 adults and five children in emergency departments around the state waiting for admission

— Nearly half of the emergency room beds at one hospital taken by psychiatric patients

Meanwhile we read that those with histories of mental illness have claimed lives at places like Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut and Aurora Movie Theatre in Colorado.

Part of the problem is a health care system which makes treatment for physical problems easily available. In the context of comparative treatment options, hospital emergency rooms — not equipped to address mental illness — are a dime a dozen, while there are waiting lists and waiting lines for mental health care.

Monday’s news conference came in the wake of a December announcement by N.H. Department of Health and Human Services officials of a new plan to cut waiting time for inpatient psychiatric care. It calls for reopening a dozen of the 60 beds closed at the state hospital due to budget cuts, improved tracking of those waiting for beds, having state hospital staff consult in emergency rooms and providing better follow-up care after discharged from the state hospital to reduce readmissions. HHS will also seek funding for community-based services, which participants at the news conference said would do more to solve the problem than adding state hospital beds.

But even that will not be enough until the public and political perception of the mentally ill changes. Gone are the days when the mentally ill were locked up, abused then forgotten at places like New Hampshire’s Laconia State School. But the lack of services, illustrated by problems at hospital emergency rooms, makes us wonder if attitudes have changed much since the days of the Laconia State School where conditions were once likened to concentration camps of Nazi Germany.

Deplorable conditions and treatment of its patents led to the school’s closing in 1991. According to former school employee, Gordon Dubois, at the time of the school’s closure there was an effort under way to establish a community-based mental health care system.

What happened to that particular effort to establish adequate community-based mental health care system seems to be lost in newspaper archives. But regardless of any early success, it never fully took hold as the numbers and stories of those filling today’s emergency rooms will attest.

We understand that dollars are tight and there is little to be squeezed from the state budget at the moment. However, that cannot justify ignoring the importance of healing someone’s mental wounds as equally well as today’s medical professions heal broken bones.

Any plan — long or short-term — must recognize an equal need to address illnesses of the body and mind so that in another 20-plus years we won’t again be wondering why there isn’t an adequate community-based mental health care system